Critical Vulnerability: CVE-2026-74628

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net/x25: fix use-after-free of the socket by its timers

The x25 timers are armed with mod_timer() and cancelled with

timer_delete(), so a pending timer holds no reference on the socket and a

cancel does not wait for a callback already running on another CPU.

x25_heartbeat_expiry() also rearms unconditionally, so it can reinstall

sk->sk_timer after __x25_destroy_socket() has passed its cancel point.

The following __sock_put() frees the socket while the timer is still

queued, and the next expiry uses freed memory. KASAN reports a

slab-use-after-free on the kmalloc-2k object freed by close().

timer_delete_sync() cannot be used here: x25_heartbeat_expiry() and

x25_timer_expiry() both reach the cancels from inside the timer they

would wait on, through __x25_destroy_socket() and x25_disconnect().

Arm the timers with sk_reset_timer() and cancel them with sk_stop_timer()

so that an armed timer owns a reference, and relea

CVE-2026-74628 is rated CRITICAL severity, requiring immediate attention from security teams.

CVSS Base Score: 9.8/10

EPSS (Exploit Prediction): 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Use Vulnios to continuously monitor your exposure to CVE-2026-74628 and similar vulnerabilities.

Vulnios scans for this vulnerability using Trivy and Grype for SBOM-based CVE matching and Vulnios CVE feed continuous monitoring against your asset inventory. Run a scan against your environment to see whether you are exposed; findings are linked back to the original CVE record so triage starts with the patch path already known.